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The Worst Film Ever

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Admirable film.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

John Sayles knows how to write a movie. More than that, however, Sayles knows how to compose such a fantastic ending to a movie. He can weave concepts and ideas from scene to scene and from character to character showing us all the different shades of the spectrum while still maintaining a mostly unbiased view of politics and corruption. In Sayles' City of Hope, this is no different, and I am not surprised that as I peruse through it's film page that less then 2,000 people have viewed this cinematic genius at work. Throughout the film, we are introduced to an easy count of 30 characters, who we can understand and compare, whether they're on screen for one hour or one minute. Vincent Spano and Joe Morton hold the most ground and screen time while never letting the viewer down on their performance. While Tony Lo Bianco and John Sayles are nothing short of brilliant in their roles as well. But above them all, David Straithairn subtly steals the show with one helluva performance that we never take full notice of until the incredible ending.I love how Sayles gave himself and Kevin Tighe the ugliest characters in the film (after seeing him do so well in Sayles earlier masterpiece, Matewan). All I can say is that this film is absolutely worth watching. It reminds us (as it reminded me) how badly society needs help and how problems don't go away until it is finally realized that such problems exist. The separation between social classes is apparent and it is also the major issue that Sayles weaves in and out of most of his character motives. Racial slurs, bigotry, prejudice, and politics are all where Sayles points the blame in this film. And by the end, Sayles has us wanting more as we see the lowest and most unnoticed character in the entire film shout for help and is totally unheard. 10/10

John Sayles directs "City of Hope". With an atypically fluid camera he weaves his way in and out of a fictional city, dipping into the lives and stories of over 40 characters. As always with Sayles, racism, crime, blue collar anxieties and political corruption are the points of interest.It's a big soap opera, and the dialogue rarely rings true, but the sheer ambition of the film nevertheless wins us over. Sayles opens on Nick Rinaldi, a young man who has spent his life getting free rides from his mafia connected father. Searching for autonomy, Nick quits the easygoing contractor's job provided by his Dad and sets out to make it on his own. Other characters are then introduced: an alderman looking to heal the black inner city, hoodlums trying to make a buck by playing the rich against the poor, contractors who face various moral problems, drug addicts and dope fiends on the streets, city mayors and politicians, lowly builders, two black kids who are perpetually hassled by cops, a professor who is falsely accused of abuse, black militants, the "white establishment", body shop owners plagued by crime...and on and on it goes.The film's title is ironic; there is little hope in sight. All of Sayles' characters seek to extricate themselves from a crumbling society, seek to find some form of flight, but escape is shown to be impossible. The social fabric is too dense, everyone is too connected (yet too bent on individualism), every action has too much of a knock on effect on every other character, for emancipation to prove successful.Aspirations are raised and discarded by Sayles, the wants and needs of some directly affecting the wants and needs of others. Characters are constantly breaking either rules, beliefs or souls, everyone pushed into making compromises, all of which have far reaching effects. This is urban life as warfare, the cast struggling to dodge ripples and repercussions. Take a character called Joe, who makes a deal with the mayor's office which unfortunately eventually leads to the death of a young woman and her baby. It's a domino effect Sayles hopes to capture, a city whose inhabitants believe themselves to be divided, at odds, but are in actuality inextricably connected.For all its ambitions, Sayles' work here is actually fairly superficial (it's a pre WW2 version of leftism). His characters are stock, walking mouthpieces with obvious character arcs, and he rarely goes beyond a kind of one-dimensional understanding of society. It's a film which only pretends to offer complexity, and if you've seen "The Wire", or read some Balzac, you'll find that Sayles lacks a certain sophistication. That said, the film becomes increasingly engrossing as it progresses, and its structure was somewhat novel back in the early 90s (only Kasdan, Spike Lee and Altman were doing similar things).Some have compared the film to Altman, but Altman's working methods are completely different. Altman's ensembles are subtle, improvised, like jazz. Sayles, in contrast, is foremost a writer. All his camera moves and characters are locked in, sealed, rigid. Where Altman's world is indeterministic, gracefully chaotic, Sayles' is blunt, rigid deterministic, his characters not allowed to escape the ink of his pen. It's closer in tone and outlook to early Spike Lee.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing. Watch "The Wire" instead.

"City of Hope": Let writer/director John Sayles pull you into one huge, HUGE, swirling Swirling SWIRLING mmmMMesSsmEEEesSSSMsmeSss of corruption. A big city has all the typical problems. Everyone operates realistically – i.e., you scratch my back, maybe I'll scratch yours. Right and wrong are lost concepts. Social and political survival tactics are practiced by the hunters and the hunted. No one is clean. Deals are made. Victims are collateral damage. It is a realistic story, with slightly enlarged dramatic characters. You won't laugh. (P.S. - See John Sayles film "The Secret of Roan Inish". It is nothing like "City of Hope" but it's amazing and wonderful.)

Unsettling and deeply emotional take on the average American city (big or small) by John Sayles ("Lone Star", "The Sunshine State"), who manages to mend an unlikely story of local politics, corruption, and mistrust among the citizens of a New Jersey town into one is remarkable. Among the many ordeals that occur here are is the fed up son (Vincent Spano) who wants to break out of the already arranged enviroment set up by his dishonest contractor father (Tony Lo Bianco) and one of the town's councilmen (Joe Morton) who looks into the case of two black kids who accuse a college professor of approaching them in a city park at night."City of Hope" has the emotional feel of a movie made by John Cassavetes or Martin Scorsese carefully mixed together. Plus, the camera work of Robert Richardson is great in showing the viewer the bleak outlook of an urban city and its inhabitants. And it showcases Sayles' best work our of the movies that he's made.